Summer is in the air and the creative juices are flowing. Just finished producing and delivering Immediate's latest CD, "Trailerhead:Saga", which has a release date of July 6, 2010. Now it's on to completing the long awaited sophomore release for Globus, our first record in 4 years! Thanks to all the fans for hanging in there and supporting "Epicon", which, amazingly, had its best ever sales reports in the first quarter of 2010. It's a testimony to the staying power of the music and all the talented individuals who make up Globus. And of course to the fans.
Not to make any excuses, but putting together a Globus album is an endeavor which requires a lot of time, attention, and of course, frequent visits of the muse at the right time! I've been working on Globus 2 for over a year now, and have had many starts and stops due to life and business interfering. :-) I now run a business which employs several people, and we are all busy producing music for various projects. There does not ever seem to be enough time to meet various production deadlines, and the best laid production plans for Globus have fallen by the wayside.
While my enthusiasm for shepherding the next Globus opus is undiminished, fans have to realize how difficult a climate the music business is in today. To produce Globus' music costs quite a bit of money, and the rewards on the other side of the equation, as evidenced by the decade long industry-wide declines in sales and increasing piracy, certainly puts a bit of a damper on the enthusiasm from a business perspective. It just doesn't make sense to sink all that time and money into creating an album which has no hope of ever recouping it's cost, let alone earning a profit. Thankfully, the creative outrules the business side, and this music must emerge for the artist in me to continue breathing. Sounds all gooey I know, but it's true....Basically, my wish is that all our fans acquire the music legally and convince all their friends to do the same ;-)
Be on the lookout for some snippets to make their appearance online in the run-up to the album's completion. We'll be relying heavily on Facebook, so make sure you join our fanpage there (www.facebook.com/globusmusic).
Have a great summer, and I'll be blogging again soon.
Yoav Goren
Globus
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Monday, June 4, 2007
The "Record" Business....part 1
One of the crappiest feelings in the world humans can have is that of disappointment. We generally tend to be optimistic, bright-eyed organisms who expect things to go our way. When they don't, and reality sets in, it's just another chunk of our youth and innocence chiseled off our very souls. Of all the disappointments we can have, loss of trust in another person in the worse.
This isn't a story about betrayal. But it does speak to the depressingly short-sightedness some people can have, and how when those people feel the taste of power, it can ruin a common human experience for A LOT of other people. I'm talking about the sorry state of the recorded music business....
I've been EXTREMELY fortunate to be a working composer for the past 15 years. My job is writing music, music that comes out of the fabric of my very being. And people who are authorized to spend part of their advertising budgets for movies have been throwing some of that towards me for quite a while now. My actual interaction with these people is fairly minimal, which means that most of the time I'm thankfully left alone to tickle the ivories, twist some knobs and do a whole lot of pointing and clicking and fader pushing - writing and producing music. Being in this fairly isolated world has largely sheltered me from the intense machinations of the film and advertising worlds, with all that money, and many careers, constantly on the line.
But now with Globus stepping out from behind the curtain and coming out into the commercial music world, I am forced to confront some demons I always knew existed, but never thought I'd actually have to interact with! People working behing the scenes in the music business do not tend to be artist-driven. They rather come from anything but musical or artistic backgrounds. I suspect many are in it because they harbor some childhood fantasy of rock stardom, or dating the prom queen that was a foot taller and had perfect skin. Not that there's anything wrong with having fantasies and acting on them, but what happens is that these folks become purveyors of cultural moralism - they ultimately become the levers which decide what is 'popular' music, and what is 'fringe' or 'eclectic'. I can point to very similar tendencies in the world of modern art. A guy can paint a canvas black, or draw several squiggly lines, and this can easily get established as high art by the 'experts' in the field. I see much of the music industry saddled with this kind of mentality (has been for decades), where the good stuff is hard to find amid a jungle of incessant and repetitive drum loops, quirky analog synth sound effects, and those same three guitar chords we've been hearing since the day we were born. I just had the pleasure of spending a few minutes (and a few dollars) on some great, accessible music on Cdbaby.com that only a relative handful of people have heard. Why can't we elevate the common musical vernacular a bit? Because most people follow, and are fearful of stepping out on a limb and exhibiting something that perhaps does not conform to the average. I'm not saying Globus is radically non-conformist - there are certainly elements of pop in our music that taps into some existing sensibilities. But could you ever imagine a Globus song being regularly played on a commercial radio station? Or MTV for that matter?
So what is this rant about anyway? Well, we're onto a new promotional campaign for a new single from EPICON. As you can imagine, this involves conforming to a certain set of rules on how to generate interest with a few powerful people in the music industry. There are certain things a label needs to spend good amounts of money on (Globus has it's own indie label, Imperativa Records), and while it's a brave new digital world out there, traditional promotional tools still rule. So you hire a plugger, PR, press agent, make a video. Right now we're mastering the single version of Orchard of Mines, and guess what the most important attribute of the single needs to be - - - how loud it bloody well is so that when they play it on the radio it will sound the same as the tune before it and after!!!!
I actually love getting my music out to a whole lot of people, because I know it has a powerful effect on some. But the road getting there is littered with catches and caveats, which I will specifically address in the next blog on this subject.
If none of the above made any sense, you're not alone. I just reread it and made a note to myself - don't embark on grand philophical treatises in the wee hours of the morning with an 18 hour workday ahead...
Part two soon....
This isn't a story about betrayal. But it does speak to the depressingly short-sightedness some people can have, and how when those people feel the taste of power, it can ruin a common human experience for A LOT of other people. I'm talking about the sorry state of the recorded music business....
I've been EXTREMELY fortunate to be a working composer for the past 15 years. My job is writing music, music that comes out of the fabric of my very being. And people who are authorized to spend part of their advertising budgets for movies have been throwing some of that towards me for quite a while now. My actual interaction with these people is fairly minimal, which means that most of the time I'm thankfully left alone to tickle the ivories, twist some knobs and do a whole lot of pointing and clicking and fader pushing - writing and producing music. Being in this fairly isolated world has largely sheltered me from the intense machinations of the film and advertising worlds, with all that money, and many careers, constantly on the line.
But now with Globus stepping out from behind the curtain and coming out into the commercial music world, I am forced to confront some demons I always knew existed, but never thought I'd actually have to interact with! People working behing the scenes in the music business do not tend to be artist-driven. They rather come from anything but musical or artistic backgrounds. I suspect many are in it because they harbor some childhood fantasy of rock stardom, or dating the prom queen that was a foot taller and had perfect skin. Not that there's anything wrong with having fantasies and acting on them, but what happens is that these folks become purveyors of cultural moralism - they ultimately become the levers which decide what is 'popular' music, and what is 'fringe' or 'eclectic'. I can point to very similar tendencies in the world of modern art. A guy can paint a canvas black, or draw several squiggly lines, and this can easily get established as high art by the 'experts' in the field. I see much of the music industry saddled with this kind of mentality (has been for decades), where the good stuff is hard to find amid a jungle of incessant and repetitive drum loops, quirky analog synth sound effects, and those same three guitar chords we've been hearing since the day we were born. I just had the pleasure of spending a few minutes (and a few dollars) on some great, accessible music on Cdbaby.com that only a relative handful of people have heard. Why can't we elevate the common musical vernacular a bit? Because most people follow, and are fearful of stepping out on a limb and exhibiting something that perhaps does not conform to the average. I'm not saying Globus is radically non-conformist - there are certainly elements of pop in our music that taps into some existing sensibilities. But could you ever imagine a Globus song being regularly played on a commercial radio station? Or MTV for that matter?
So what is this rant about anyway? Well, we're onto a new promotional campaign for a new single from EPICON. As you can imagine, this involves conforming to a certain set of rules on how to generate interest with a few powerful people in the music industry. There are certain things a label needs to spend good amounts of money on (Globus has it's own indie label, Imperativa Records), and while it's a brave new digital world out there, traditional promotional tools still rule. So you hire a plugger, PR, press agent, make a video. Right now we're mastering the single version of Orchard of Mines, and guess what the most important attribute of the single needs to be - - - how loud it bloody well is so that when they play it on the radio it will sound the same as the tune before it and after!!!!
I actually love getting my music out to a whole lot of people, because I know it has a powerful effect on some. But the road getting there is littered with catches and caveats, which I will specifically address in the next blog on this subject.
If none of the above made any sense, you're not alone. I just reread it and made a note to myself - don't embark on grand philophical treatises in the wee hours of the morning with an 18 hour workday ahead...
Part two soon....
Friday, December 8, 2006
You know life can be long, and you've got to be so strong....
I am reminded today of that December 8 twenty-six years ago when John Lennon was killed on the streets of New York.
I was a teenager growing up in the city, and the Beatles were the single biggest musical influence in my budding artistic explorations. I knew every word and every chord to every Beatle song, and was mesmerized by the artistry of their productions, especially from '66-'70. It was during the summer of '80 when my older brother turned me on to his John Lennon solo album collection, which I had never really delved into before. I immediately was attracted to the stark and brutally honest "Plastic Ono Band" - I had never heard an album sound like that! "Imagine" also came close to wearing out its LP grooves in those days. Lennon's music was all so personal and real, and listening to those two albums every day for several months was like visiting a friend bearing his soul. It happened to be John's goobye for me.
Of course, I have every Lennon solo album, but none in my opinion reaches the sheer emotion of "Plastic Ono Band" and "Imagine". And I am reminded in my musical journey to bring out that same level of emotion in my music. I aspire to do it with an epic orchestra and choir, and John did it simply with a raw guitar, basic piano chords and scratchy vocal. Genius, that.....
"Wherever you are, you are here"
Thanks, John.
I was a teenager growing up in the city, and the Beatles were the single biggest musical influence in my budding artistic explorations. I knew every word and every chord to every Beatle song, and was mesmerized by the artistry of their productions, especially from '66-'70. It was during the summer of '80 when my older brother turned me on to his John Lennon solo album collection, which I had never really delved into before. I immediately was attracted to the stark and brutally honest "Plastic Ono Band" - I had never heard an album sound like that! "Imagine" also came close to wearing out its LP grooves in those days. Lennon's music was all so personal and real, and listening to those two albums every day for several months was like visiting a friend bearing his soul. It happened to be John's goobye for me.
Of course, I have every Lennon solo album, but none in my opinion reaches the sheer emotion of "Plastic Ono Band" and "Imagine". And I am reminded in my musical journey to bring out that same level of emotion in my music. I aspire to do it with an epic orchestra and choir, and John did it simply with a raw guitar, basic piano chords and scratchy vocal. Genius, that.....
"Wherever you are, you are here"
Thanks, John.
The New Website.....
Welcome to Globus first blog. These will be posted on a regular basis, so check back with us often. We're definitely working on a few fronts over the next few months to roll out Globus to all four corners of the globe!
Very pleased with new look and feel of the Globus website, but that's not all the exciting news.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be rolling out a couple of very cool features to the site which will let you interact with Globus material, both audio and visual. We plan on posting separate tracks of one of our songs and allowing users to create mashups and remixes. We'll then have a submission contest and award first, second and third prizes. We'll also make available some of our video footage and allow users to create their own multimedia clips in sync with our music. We'll then post the winning entries on our website for all to hear. Now you guys get to have as much fun as we do, immersing yourself in Cinematic Rock!!
We've been promising this for a while, and it's almost upon us. Right before Xmas, we'll post our little thank you in the Bonus Track section of the website in the form of a new track from Globus. We're putting the finishing touches on it in between writing music for some very big trailers. Just can't get away from this style of music! Anyway, e-mails to all our fans will be going out very shortly alerting you of the availability!
Thanks to all our ardent supporters. We appreciate your comments on the website, how we can make it better, and any ideas you have regarding anything Globus!
Cheers from LA!
Very pleased with new look and feel of the Globus website, but that's not all the exciting news.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be rolling out a couple of very cool features to the site which will let you interact with Globus material, both audio and visual. We plan on posting separate tracks of one of our songs and allowing users to create mashups and remixes. We'll then have a submission contest and award first, second and third prizes. We'll also make available some of our video footage and allow users to create their own multimedia clips in sync with our music. We'll then post the winning entries on our website for all to hear. Now you guys get to have as much fun as we do, immersing yourself in Cinematic Rock!!
We've been promising this for a while, and it's almost upon us. Right before Xmas, we'll post our little thank you in the Bonus Track section of the website in the form of a new track from Globus. We're putting the finishing touches on it in between writing music for some very big trailers. Just can't get away from this style of music! Anyway, e-mails to all our fans will be going out very shortly alerting you of the availability!
Thanks to all our ardent supporters. We appreciate your comments on the website, how we can make it better, and any ideas you have regarding anything Globus!
Cheers from LA!
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